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Thursday, July 23, 2020

Review: Blood Vessel


Director: Justin Dix
Screenplay: Justin Dix and Jordan Prosser
Year: 2020

After I finished watching “Blood Vessel” and reaching the moment where I must vomit in prose my thoughts about the movie, I am entirely in blanc. So much so that I have resorted to starting to talk about myself over the film. The problem is that I consider that this work by director Justin Dix (“Crawlspace”) falls in a neutral area, where nothing stands out too much either for good or bad, and this makes it difficult to talk about it. 

“Blood Vessel” takes place during the end of World War II, where, as a consequence of the war, a group of seven survivors finds themselves adrift in the ocean. Their luck seems to change once they spot a German Nazi ship, and they find a way to get on it. However, the silence and the lack of a proper welcome to their invasive entry is just an omen of the bloody secret sleeping inside the ship.


As expected, the group of survivors starts exploring the ship, and as they begin uncovering clues as to what might have happened there, their numbers start to decrease. From accidents to confrontations with survivors inside the ship, the body count mounts to accompany the number of corpses found at every corner of the vessel. Among the few survivors, they find a small girl, that should have activated everyone’s alarms as to why she was able to survive the apparent massacre that took place there, but the survivors decide to add her to their team.

Just as no one got alarmed by how a little girl could have survived such a hostile environment, the script by Justin Dix and Jordan Prosser has several plot holes that slowly sink it to mediocrity. The rhythm in which the movie develops is low and inversely proportional to the amount of dialogue that prevents it from accelerating. During the third act, what is evident from the beginning is revealed, and this helps it to substantially improve the rhythm and make the most out of the special effects.


One of the things that stand out above the rest in “Blood Vessel” is the special effects, particularly the gore and the monster (yes, we all know from the start that there is a monster inside the ship and this is not a spoiler). Without being spectacular, its good practical effects used to give life to the monster and to take it from the rest of the survivors is the best-crafted area of the movie and what helps it counterweight the areas in which it doesn’t do a great job. 

“Blood Vessel” is the sort of movie that is mildly entertaining but destined to sink into the dark waters of the hundreds of horror movies that are released every year and that fail to leave a mark in its audience, either for good or bad. Its plot is slow and has many holes and questionable decisions, but its special effects compensate for these issues. The third act substantially improves the rhythm of the movie, but it goes by without offering anything memorable.




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